Boss of ISPT Says Event May Not Happen

Friday, September 21st, 2012 by Ryan

The International Stadiums Poker Tour, or the ISPT has had some major hype surrounding it, and the positives that are coming out through the press seem to have the hype at an all-time high currently. The tournament was set to kick off in May of 2013 at Wembley Stadium, but it seems that things may have taken a step back as there are some major doubts and questions popping up around it. Many people have had their doubts from the word go about this tournament, and even though the ISPT has had some major signings in big named poker players, as well as announcing satellites to get into the big event, it’s looking more and more like the tournament will be a long shot.

According to the Marketing Director for the new poker tournament, George Djen, he stated that if at least 15,000 players do not show up, that this tournament will not end up being held at all. He also went on to state that they could “guarantee that this will be the hugest tournament in the world in terms of participants. A maximum of 30,000 players could play.”

This news came just after there was a planned press conference for the ISPT where they were going to go in-depth with the details of the tournament itself, and also explain how the guaranteed prize pool would be split up. This press conference was cancelled though, and the largest issue was the guarantee for the event, which was set at €30 million. It didn’t take too long for the ISPT to decide to reduce this guaranteed prize pool to €20 million, and the talks now have been that the word guarantee could be taken down from the tournament and the site all together.

This decision is coming just after the weird situation happened at the Partouche Poker Tour when the tour tried to go back on a €5 million guarantee that the tour put on their Main Event. They took back the guarantee saying that it was not true, even though there was proof of it online, and they then decided to honor that guarantee after there was some serious backlash. As you may know, the ISPT is linked with many people from the Partouche Poker Tour, including the Partouche family.

A few of the names that have signed along with the ISPT include Michael Mizrachi, David Benyamine, Sam Trickett, and Liz Lieu. They also managed to get Patrik Antonius to wear quite a bit of their gear for the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event also. As far as the dates for the tournament, the Wembley Stadium has actually been booked from May 31 to June 6th for the event, so only time will tell what is going to happen with this situation.

The ISPT originally came up with the Groupe Bernard Tapie was in the process of attempting to purchase Full Tilt Poker. Things fell through, and many felt that this would be the end of the ISPT as well, but they have continued to move forward from there.